Fantastic Beasts, The Ways We Find Them
by Lillielle
Summary: Disclaimer: I own nothing. Drabble collection for the Fantastic Beasts challenge. I don't know how many I'll write, but hopefully a lot.
1. Know Your Worth

_Horklump: The Horklump is not very useful, so write about someone who doesn't think they're important._

With trembling hands, Neville stuffed his Potions notes into his bookbag, wincing when the ink smeared, but not otherwise able to care. Jeers and taunts aimed at him shredded his meagre mental defenses until finally, he had to hurry out of the classroom, bookbag flap unbuckled, to the tune of sneering laughter. His leg burned where his useless potion had splashed up, but he refused to go to the Hospital Wing for it. Not again. Madam Pomfrey would give him that _look_ and click her tongue and while she helped, she always did, he knew what she was thinking. _How had he made it to Hogwarts?_

Truth be told, not even he knew. He'd been ever so pleased when he got his letter. Even more pleased than when his great uncle was holding him out of the window, accidentally let go, and he bounced. For a moment then, when he'd felt all the blood rushing to his head, felt the strange pressure in his temples, he'd almost hoped he wouldn't have magic. That Uncle Algie would drop him and he'd splatter all over the back garden. But the moment had passed, like they always did, and his grandmother's approval had felt like the most soothing balm he'd ever experienced.

But now that he was _here_, well...Neville sighed and slackened his pace, noticing that once again, his path unconsciously led him to the greenhouses. He liked plants. Liked Herbology. He was actually _good_ at that. It was just everything else he couldn't seem to manage to do. Professor Snape looked at him with that scathing sneer, those cruel black eyes, and labelled him a complete incompetent nitwit. Professor McGonagall just sighed and shook her head and directed "_Again_, Mr. Longbottom," and he knew she was wondering how he'd managed to get Sorted into her House. He wondered the same thing. He wasn't brave enough for Gryffindor. He'd wanted to be placed in Hufflepuff. Longed for it, actually. A place where he could finally belong!

But no, the Hat had opened up its rip of a brim and shouted "GRYFFINDOR" to the entire Hall, and how could Neville argue with that? He'd been in such a daze he'd forgotten to take the Hat off, and wasn't that lovely, starting off your school career with the entire student body laughing at you.

He knocked tentatively on the doorframe of Greenhouse 1, hoping that Professor Sprout wasn't in another class. Sometimes she was and he took to wandering around the grounds at those times, studying his shoes intently as he kicked small pebbles around or scuffed aimless patterns into the dirt.

But this time, thankfully, the door opened wide and her smiling face beckoned him in.

"Neville!" she exclaimed happily, brushing dirt off her gardening gloves and giving him a brisk hug. "Come in! You're just in time, I was about to repot a wailing begonia." Neville cast a dubious look at the overly large magenta flower, currently shrouded in glass to keep from breaking the eardrums of everyone in earshot.

"Can I help?" he asked tentatively, nibbling on his bottom lip. Professor Sprout beamed at him and clapped him on the shoulder, nearly knocking him over.

"Of course, Neville, that's why I mentioned it," she said kindly. She always had a kind word for Neville. Never yelled at him, never told him he was the nearest thing to a Squib. He found himself blushing to the tips of his ears every class period when she praised his work.

"See here, everyone, Mr. Longbottom has done it!" she would direct them all to see where he'd performed a particularly challenging bit of pruning, or how he'd watered his tubers perfectly. The rest of the class would grumble and roll their eyes, but it didn't matter to Neville, because Professor Sprout _believed in him_. And that was worth everything, wasn't it?

He washed up and placed a pair of pink, fluffy earmuffs over his head, just in case, as Professor Sprout removed the glass. The repotting went without a hitch, and the begonia was toted off to Greenhouse 5, with the other more dangerous plants. Like a venomous tentacula who was currently inching its tendrils around Neville's waist until Professor Sprout gave it a playful tap and an order to knock it off.

"Thanks, Neville, I don't know what I'd do without your help," Professor Sprout smiled at him. "Twenty points to Gryffindor."

"Thank you, Professor," he mumbled, staring at the ground in embarrassment. For a moment, he wished he was in Hufflepuff.

"Professor?" he added, cheeks burning at his own audacity. She turned and smiled at him, giving the tentacula another absent-minded pat.

"Yes, Neville?"

"Can a student ever be ReSorted?"


	2. Apparition is Child's Play

_Diricawl: The Diricawl is capable of disappearing and reappearing at will. Write about someone learning to Apparate._

Again.

And again.

And again.

Not until he felt like he'd splinched every body part he knew about and others he didn't did Harry Potter stop. He finally slumped to the grass, leaning against the back hedge of the Weasleys' property, feeling every inch the failure.

Hermione had mastered Apparating her second try. Even Ron had mastered it after the first few days of practice. But Harry? It was going on a _month_ and still nothing. He'd left pieces of himself scattered all over the Burrow, much to everyone's disgust. That is, if he managed to move at all.

"You just need practice, Harry!" Mrs. Weasley chirped, but even her patience was starting to grow thin. Harry raked a hand through his hair and sighed as a shadow fell over him. Great. Someone else coming to have a laugh at him probably.

"Potter," the person said and he realised that no, it was worse. It was Severus Snape himself.

"Snape," he acknowledged shortly. The man sat down cross-legged in front of him, no longer blocking the sun. He looked as sour and greasy-haired as ever, despite the soft summer breeze.

"I hear you've been having trouble with Apparition," Snape said without preamble. Harry flushed scarlet before squeezing out a reluctant 'yes.'

"I just-I don't know what the bloody problem is, but I can't do it!" Harry finally burst out, his voice shriller than he'd intended. Horrified he'd just essentially yelled at his hated Potions professor, he went even redder and stared intently at the knots of grass by his knee.

"Did you know, Potter," Snape began almost conversationally. "That I couldn't Apparate properly for six months?"

"No, sir," Harry said, feeling dumbstruck. _Snape? _Had _trouble_ with something?

"It was embarassing, of course," Snape continued. "Humiliating. Everyone else could do it, why couldn't I? That was the problem. Always was. You're focusing on the wrong thing, Potter."

"What do you mean?" Harry cocked his head, baffled. "I just focus on where I am and where I want to be..."

"Precisely," Snape interrupted. "And for most people, that is enough. But not for I, and apparently not for you."

"Well, then, what am I supposed to do then?" Harry snapped, his frustration making him dig his nails into his palms.

"First, apologise for that tone, Potter," Snape said, raising one eyebrow in that inimitable sneer. Harry nodded and quickly mumbled an apology. "Secondly-focus solely on where you want to be. Picture yourself there. Imagine you are _already_ there. Block everything and everyone else out. Practice that."

"Thanks, professor," Harry said, feeling a second wind course through him. "I think I've got a handle on it now, then."

"Potter, wait," Snape tried to say, but Harry focused, attempted to Apparate, and...

Found half of him halfway up the garden and the other half by Snape.

A moment of agonising pain later and Snape had put him back together with a hasty wave of his wand. Harry scowled up at Snape, his lips writhing in that particular way they had when they'd been recently wrenched apart.

"I thought you said that would work!" he complained, rubbing at his arms and legs until the soreness went away.

Snape smirked.

"You need dinner and _rest_ first, Potter," Snape said, turning back toward the house. "Even were you not doing it improperly, you've attempted far too many times in one day. Apparation is an exhausting process, and learning it doubly so. Practice _tomorrow_, and you will be much closer to having success." He Apparated away with a small pop of displaced air, as if to prove his point. Despite himself, Harry found himself smiling as he hobbled back for supper, Ron and Hermione coming out to meet him.

The next day, he Apparated perfectly from the front porch to the gate.


	3. Frozen in Time

_Dugbog: Dugbogs' favourite food is Mandrake, so write about someone who was petrified by the Basilisk._

Everyone thought that once you were Petrified, you couldn't remember anything until you were un-Petrified. That everything stopped. It wasn't true, and Hermione discovered just how much it wasn't true when she glimpsed the lamplight-coloured eyes of the basilisk in Penelope Clearwater's mirror, and time _stopped._

She could feel everything, see everything. The stone floor hurt when her rigid body crashed down against it, and her leg itched where Penelope's hair brushed against it. She could feel the scrunched up scrap of paper in her hand, the crumpled page that held all the answers, now locked tight in her Petrified fingers.

When a young Hufflepuff boy stumbled across them and blundered over her foot, screaming his head off, she felt the bruise form across her ankle. When Headmaster Dumbledore levitated her and Penelope to the Hospital Wing, Hermione felt her elbow crack against a door-frame, and the way her hair tugged free of her collar.

When Harry and Ron managed to visit her, her heart squeezed painfully at the sight of their tear-ravaged faces, of the concern and worry that etched themselves across each boy's eyes. She wished that she could direct them to the paper still frozen tight in her hand, but nothing. Always nothing.

It was very boring in the Hospital Wing, and Hermione wished that she could read. Study. _Something_. Her only moments of entertainment were when Madam Pomfrey came out, carefully squeezing eyedrops into her eyes so they didn't dry out, and performing other necessary functions. Sometimes she railed against her imprisonment, beating her mental hands on the sides of her skull until her forehead ached, but nothing happened. Not so much as a twitch out here.

When Harry finally noticed the scrap of paper curled in her fingers, Hermione rejoiced, wishing that she could help him un-clench her hand, free the page, but of course, it was useless. _Go to Dumbledore, Harry!_ she urged him fiercely inside her head, but she knew he wouldn't. And when Ginny Weasley was deposited in the next bed over for a thorough check-up, Hermione was saddened, but not surprised.

And then the Mandrakes were ready, and Madam Pomfrey was tipping the restoration draught down her throat, and she coughed, sputtering, feeling spreading through her limbs like an electricity-infused flood.

"Welcome back," and she could practically feel Pomfrey's relief bubbling over her, as the woman fussed about her, telling her all the things she'd missed, and what could Hermione do but smile and nod and croak a response in the right places.

How could she tell Madam Pomfrey that she'd been awake for all of it?


	4. The Unsuspected

_Crup: The Crup resembles a Jack Russell terrier, which is Ron Weasley's patronus, so write a fic about Ron._

The Order knew that someone was a spy for the other side. Someone was feeding Voldemort information about who would strike where, when Harry would be various places, when Voldemort could strike for the maximum damage. Suspicion fell at first on Snape, but when Snape showed up one wintry evening, pale as a corpse and coughing up blood, admitting that Voldemort had discovered his true allegiance and he'd barely gotten away in time, well, they had to find another culprit.

Still, no one could have guessed the truth that was revealed sometime in late May, when Ronald Bilius Weasley stood at the gates of Hogwarts, Death Eater mask in one hand, hair blowing about his face, and proclaimed that his Lord approached, and that they must all surrender to the Darkness. His freckles stood out like a brand, but his voice was steadier than Harry had ever heard it.

Hermione cried, whispering "why" to herself like a broken record player, but there were no answers. There never were. The Battle of Hogwarts was fierce and bloody. When it came down to it, Harry and Voldemort dueling each other, Hermione found Ron, his leg pinned by falling bits of rock, blood painted on the side of his face.

"Why?" she asked him, wand trained on him.

"No one suspects a Weasley," he said, his mouth twisting, and slipped into unconsciousness. It wasn't until months later, after he'd been trapped in St. Mungo's, that they discovered he'd been under the Imperius Curse all year, cast by Bellatrix Lestrange when he'd visited Diagon Alley alone.

"I'm sorry," Hermione said when he was discharged, but he had no words for her. Not yet.

He did have a smile, and he bestowed it upon her with heart-stopping sweetness before limping off, his hand firmly grasping his blackwood cane.


	5. Abandoned

_Hungarian Horntail. This is the dragon Harry faced, so write about Harry Potter._

For as long as he can remember, Harry knows only the streets. Tiny and street-savvy, he avoids the well-meaning, misguided care workers that trawl the back alleys and ravaged corners for people just like him. The abandoned people. The lost people.

Harry wants to stay lost. Though it is dim in memory, he recalls the Dursleys, the Big One and the Thin One, the Fat One a cruel third. They _hurt_ him, hurt him in ways that hurt far worse than anything that has happened to him while living out _here_, and then threw him out, cast him into a rubbish bin with nothing but his own blood-stained clothes and his very bedraggled baby blanket. He carries a square of that in his back pocket. The faded blue reminds him he was loved at one time.

When the owl shows up, pecking insistently at his fingers until he unties the vellum envelope, his name scrawled across the front, he thinks he is going insane. The contents only further this belief. The owl won't leave until he takes up a pencil and scrawls a crooked, misshapen reply on the back of the letter. "This is a bludy grat joke. Im not goin. Harry."

When Severus Snape shows up, the owl perched on his shoulder like some misbegotten, overly fluffy harbinger, Harry is convinced he is hallucinating. He squints up at the man, feeling sick, as the black-garbed apparition blocks out the light. He tries to say he didn't know ghosts could do that, but his tongue is too thick and clumsy in his mouth, and he manages nothing but a weak garble.

Snape tells him that he is a wizard, a poor excuse for one, and to get up at once. That he is coming to Hogwarts. That he is the Boy Who Lived, this is his destiny.

"I don't want it," Harry tells him, as firmly as an eleven-year-old boy can, and turns away. For a moment, he is afraid that Snape will tug him along anyway, drag him to god knows where, subjected to who knows what.

Instead, Snape says all right, but he'll be back, and without a sound, the man is gone. Harry sits down hard on the ground, clicking his teeth together over his tongue and wincing at the bright flash of pain.

He wonders if it is still worth it to remain lost.


End file.
